blood proceed? This question Dr. Lane does not touch upon, but we believe that Dr. Barter, the well-known Hydropathic physician of Blarney, considers that it arises from defective vitality [7] in the blood, caused by deficiency of oxygen in the system, more immediately proceeding from defective capacity of the lungs, and imperfect action of the skin. The skin and lungs, it must be remembered, are supplementary organs; stop the action of either, and death inevitably ensues, and on their perfect or imperfect action, perfect or imperfect health depends. This view of the disease is illustrated by the history of the monkey: in its wild state, the best authorities state, it never gets consumption, but domesticate the animal, so inducing bad action of the lungs, from want of sufficient exercise and wholesome air, and imperfect action of the skin, arising from the same cause, and it usually dies of this disease. These observations equally apply to all cases of scrofulous degeneration, which physicians estimate as carrying off prematurely one-sixth of the whole human family. [8] Of this terrible disease, the scourge of the human race, it is sufficient to observe, that consumption is merely a form of it, and that it is, moreover, hereditary, a fact which would corroborate the opinion of its being a true blood disease. Having referred to the fact of the lungs and skin being supplementary organs—the principal duty of both being to aerate the blood—it may be interesting to lay before our readers the following extracts from the results of Monsieur Fourcault’s experiments bearing on the subject. These experiments were made with the view of ascertaining the effect of the suppression of transpiration by the skin, in animals, on coating their bodies with an impermeable varnish. The committee of the French Institute thus describes these experiments:— “The substances which he used were givet-glue, dextrine, pitch, and tar, and several plastic compounds; sometimes the varnish was made to cover the whole of the animal’s body, at other times only a more or less extensive part of it. The accidents which follow this proceeding are more or less complete or incomplete, general or partial. In every case the health of the animals is soon much impaired and their life in danger. Those which have been submitted to those experiments, under our observation, have died in one or two days, and in some cases in a few hours only. “In the opinion of the committee these experiments are full of interest for the future, * * * * the experiments of M. Fourcault cannot fail to throw a new light upon the physiological and pathological phenomena, depending upon the double function of inhalation and exhalation of the cutaneous system.” Monsieur Fourcault himself thus writes:—